


Hot Weird Duck Guy That Had No Pants On

by emeraldcitydowntowngirl



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Ducks, M/M, Meet-Cute, but you know what, unrealistic circumstances, you already kno whats goin on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-22 22:10:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13176243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeraldcitydowntowngirl/pseuds/emeraldcitydowntowngirl
Summary: “Okay, hear me out…” Hayley says tentatively, staring at her computer screen like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. “But I think the Weird Duck Guy is looking for you? Come check this out.”She points at her laptop, when Patrick leans over, curious as fuck. Weird Duck Guy? Hot Weird Duck Guy? Hot Weird Duck Guy That Had No Pants On? And sure enough, Hayley’s pointing to a picture attached to a tweet by some guy named Pete. The tweet says ‘plz help, hella desperate, he was cute. DM me if ur him and ill give u the rest of my nmbr ;)’ and the picture is of a flyer that reads ‘MISSED CONNECTION: You were the guy sitting on this park bench. I was the guy fighting a duck for my pants and losing. If you saw me, please call me! 323-721-XXXX!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I got my pants back BTW! Let’s hang out!!!’“Oh my god,” Patrick says. “That’s Hot Weird Duck Guy That Had No Pants On.”





	Hot Weird Duck Guy That Had No Pants On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohcinnamon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohcinnamon/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADI <33333 i promise you're gonna get a better bday/valentines/just because present when i can ship stuff to you, but for now, i just have a shitty fic. we talked about this a while ago on tumblr and i was thinking of a million things to write for you before i remembered i still had these screenshots LOL. anyways, not to be sappy on AO3 and shit but !!!!!! girlfriends!! us!! ahhh!! hope you enjoy this :') <3

Sometimes, when really shitty things happen to Patrick, he likes to pretend he’s the star of some emo band’s music video.

Like right now: He’s crying, and he’s holding red roses with one hand, and wiping snot off his face with the other, and he’s cold, and he’s miserable, and he’s sure he looks like an idiot, but if he pretends like this is the beginning of the music video, before all of the good stuff happens, before the chorus hits, and something cool happens, and he sees a hot guy, and they fall in love, if he pretends that all of that is gonna happen… it’s not so bad.

It’s a weird coping mechanism, but it works. Hayley, his best friend, always tells him that it’s better than crying into a tub of ice cream while _lying_ in the bathroom tub, and he agrees. He can already hear the song in his head… the sad guitar to match his mood and the lead singer’s whiny voice, and for some reason, that’s comforting.

He got stood up.

The roses, they were for _him_. The fancy cologne he’s wearing, it was for _him_. The new hat, the way that Hayley helped him pin it in place in case the wind wasn’t on Patrick’s side, he wore it for _him_.

He feels like a fucking fool.

It’s spring outside, so it’s not cold, but he has goosebumps from the breeze. It’s a beautiful day, the sun is shining even though it’s a little windy, and Patrick’s sitting on his favorite bench in his favorite park, the one with the duck pond in the middle of it. There are flowers everywhere, but no bees yet, and under any other circumstances, Patrick would be bursting with _happy_. Notebook out, headphones in, writing about everything he felt. _Sunshine_ , he would write in pastel pink, _flowers_ , in yellow. But right now? He feels like the dead of winter.

He sniffles again, curling his hand around the stems of the roses tighter. The guy Patrick was supposed to meet was so fucking hot, of course he wouldn’t like him. He’s… _him_. That’s the only way Patrick can describe himself. He would say it in the mirror while getting ready, with a nasty scowl. “Patrick. You’re _just_ Patrick.”

Self-pitying is Patrick’s favorite hobby, right next to ‘Writing Music’ and ‘Playing Music’, and once Patrick starts, he can’t stop. And this, right now, is like a horrible retox following his great detox- sitting on Hayley’s bed as they both shouted at each other **_“WE ARE HOT! AND WORTHY OF LOVE!”_** Horrible thoughts run in his head, as he stares forward, straight-faced. _Why would he like you? You pin your fucking hat to your head, man. Your hat!_

However, as hard as it is for Patrick to snap out of his mindset, he does suddenly. One second he’s berating himself about, like, the random freckle on his nose, and the other, he’s staring wide-eyed at the guy in his underwear fighting a duck for a pair of sweatpants.

“DONALD, YOU PIECE OF SHIT, GIVE THAT BACK TO ME,” The guy, supporting lacy purple Victoria Secret boyshorts underwear, yells at the duck. The _duck_. The duck has the guy’s sweatpants in its mouth, yeah, but Patrick’s- but he- but how????????????????????????????????

Patrick stares as the two of them… fight (?) over the sweatpants. He doesn’t know what to do. Help the stranger in his underwear? Help the _duck_? Go run for help? Pull out his phone to take a video to show Hayley because _holyshitwhatishappeningrightnow?_ Start crying some more because he’s not sure if he’s hallucinating this and if he’s hallucinating this then _why_ is he hallucinating _this_? Some hot guy in lacy underwear fighting a duck for sweatpants?

The duck, Donald, the guy called him, _how original,_ _does_ seem to be in it to kill- he’s not letting go of those sweatpants. There’s a fire in this duck’s eyes, like he knows what he’s doing, like he knows he has this guy’s actual _pants_ , and the guy, who’s admittedly super fucking hot, even while he’s begging a duck for his pants back, _knows_ that this duck knows what he’s doing. “WOULD YOU JUST STOP, GIVE ME MY PANTS BACK!”

Patrick brings his hands up to cover his mouth, and he watches on. Lacy-Underwear’s cell phone flies out of the pants pocket, and tumbles to the ground with a definitive glass shatter but it’s a better fate than it could have been, because the guy loses his grip on the pants, falls on his ass, and Donald the Duck and the guy’s sweatpants go back into the pond.

“YOU’LL PAY FOR THIS!” The dark-haired man yells. “THIS FIGHT ISN’T OVER, _DONALD_.”

The guy turns to look at Patrick after everything is said and done, after Donald chews apart his sweatpants and spits it into the pond, and suddenly Patrick wishes he was invisible, so that he doesn’t have to deal with whatever the guy is gonna say to him. Or deal with the guy in general, because they both were witnesses to the weirdest fucking thing Patrick’s ever seen with his own two eyes.

“Um… can you grab my phone?” the guy asks with a wince.

“Yeah! Yeah, yeah, um… yeah, yeah, here,” Patrick stutters, pulling himself together, leaving the roses on the bench alone for a moment to hand the broken phone over. The man takes it gratefully, he’s still sitting on his ass on the grass, and Patrick can’t- his dick is just right there, women’s panties aren’t meant to cover _balls_ , okay, and-

“Do you want my roses?” Patrick blurts out. “Because I’m seeing a lot more than I need to right now and it’s gonna look really fucking bad if a, if a, if a _park ranger_ or something finds you like this, and. Just. Take the roses?”

The guy looks at him for a moment, with wide-eyes, phone still clutched in hand, before he shrugs, trying to look nonchalant, but it’s mostly grateful. “Yeah, that would be cool, thanks… you don’t need them?”

Patrick frowns. “No, I don’t need them.”

He grabs them from off the bench and he hands them to the guy, their fingers brush, and he swears he can feel something, something _good_ in his gut, like a shift from a minor chord to a major one. He ignores it, mostly because it means nothing in the grand scheme of things, right, because this guy is cute, but the guy that stood Patrick up, he was cute too, and look where that got him.

The guy grins, he brings the roses up to his nose, and he says, “They smell good. Thanks again!” before he presses a couple of buttons on his phone, and brings it up to his ear. And this is Patrick’s cue to go… so, he goes.

It sorta seems like a dream the longer Patrick thinks about it. Really… a guy in purple boyshorts fighting a duck for sweatpants… it’s gotta be some sort of hysterical daydream that he came up with. Nevertheless, he walks home in a better mood than he was in before, so he supposes whatever that was, was worth it.

* * *

Andy and Joe find Pete in the bathroom. Luck is never ever ever ever ever _ever_ in Pete’s favor, and Donald fucking stole his pants, but the pond is right near the bathrooms, and thanks to the roses, Pete was able to run there without any, uh, _park rangers_ finding him and arresting him for being half-naked in a park.

“Are we going to talk about the underwear? I really wanna talk about the underwear,” Andy says, with a laugh. But not a mean laugh, a friendly laugh, which makes Pete feel _a little_ bit better. Not a lot, but a little, and that’s progress, and Pete will definitely take progress.

He passes Pete a new pair of sweatpants, and Pete sets the roses down in the sink so that he can slip the new pair of sweatpants over the lacy underwear. “No, we’re not talking about the underwear. And dude, are you talking pictures of me?!”

Joe slides his phone back into his back pocket. “For blackmail, duh.”

Both Andy and Pete give Joe sideways glances. “Right… for ‘ _blackmail’_ ”

“Anyway,” Andy says, changing the subject, “where did you get the roses from? And can we get out of here? It smells like piss.”

“Makes sense,” Joe grins. “Seeing as Pete had to hide out in a bathroom for 30 minutes while he waited for us to bring him pants ‘cause Donald stole them.”

Fucking _Donald_. Pete would strangle that fucking duck if he could, but he’s not totally heartless, and besides, he knows he would lose. Seeing as how Pete’s old sweatpants was torn into shreds, recounting Donald’s grip on the pants, remembering how Donald had knocked Pete off his feet and fucking pulled his sweatpants off in the first place?! Fighting with Donald the Duck is a death sentence.

“Let’s walk and talk. Andy, you play bodyguard, I’m not losing another pair of pants.”

The 3 of them all but run out of the bathroom and out of the park- Donald’s eyes were on them, Pete could feel that beady eyed stare on his back, but they were safe once they were out of the park’s bounds. Sweaty and gross from running, and with a bouquet of roses in his hands, Pete doesn’t begin his tale about how he fell captive to Donald’s revenge. He tells them about _him_.

“I got the roses from this guy. He was so… I don’t know? I don’t know… he had this, this paperboy hat on, and these really blue eyes, and he watched the whole altercation happen, and then he gave me the flowers! To cover my dick, because I was clearly defeated. Fuckin’ clearly.”

“He gave you flowers to cover your dick,” Joe deadpans. “Dude, what the hell. That’s not romantic, that’s- that’s that guy just covering your ass!”

“Covering his dick,” Andy corrects, and Joe laughs behind his hands as Pete rolls his eyes. “You guys just don’t get it. There was like, like a fucking connection. We had a fucking connection! He was so cute, and nice, y’know? He was nice, and I just, I just gotta find him again! I have to talk to him, I have to meet him again.”

Joe and Andy share yet another look. They do this a lot, share looks with each other with each other. It’s usually a sign that Pete’s being ridiculous.

“Okay, before you ring the wedding bells, do you even know this guy’s name? You keep referring to him as ‘him’” Andy remarks, and Joe nods.

“Oh my god,” Pete says. Because oh my god. He didn’t ever get the guy’s name. “I didn’t get his name! We need to make a post about this, I need to find him!”

* * *

It’s about 3 days after _it_ happened that Patrick hears about it again. He had told Hayley all about what happened when he got home because he had to explain why he had come home so early, and besides, it’s not every day that some hot weird guy fights a duck for sweatpants. They talked about it over dinner, Hayley laughed till she cried when Patrick mentioned the lacy underwear because _what in the fuck_ , and then that was it.

That was it, until that wasn’t it.

They’re sitting on the couch, half-rewatching episodes of Catfish, and half scrolling on their laptops, being lazy. They’ve got sheet-masks on, and they’re drinking green tea, and they’re in a total state of relaxation. Patrick types another sentence of his essay before he deletes it with a sigh, and Hayley’s in the middle of explaining something about how all men are stupid, as she grabs her mug.

However, she chokes on her boiling hot green tea when she stumbles upon a tweet on her twitter feed, and as soon as she finishes coughing everything out of her system, she says, voice raspy and rough, to keep Patrick’s attention, “Patrick, holy shit, guess what I’m looking at?!”

Patrick raises his eyebrows, suddenly even more concerned. “I’m bad at guessing, can you just tell me?”

“Okay, hear me out…” Hayley says tentatively, staring at her computer screen like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. “But I think the Weird Duck Guy is looking for you? Come check this out.”

She points at her laptop, when Patrick leans over, curious as fuck. Weird Duck Guy? Hot Weird Duck Guy? Hot Weird Duck Guy That Had No Pants On? And sure enough, Hayley’s pointing to a picture attached to a tweet by some guy named Pete. The tweet says ‘plz help, hella desperate, he was cute. DM me if ur him and ill give u the rest of my nmbr ;)’ and the picture is of a flyer that reads ‘MISSED CONNECTION: You were the guy sitting on this park bench. I was the guy fighting a duck for my pants and losing. If you saw me, please call me! 323-721-XXXX!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I got my pants back BTW! Let’s hang out!!!’

“Oh my god,” Patrick says. “That’s Hot Weird Duck Guy That Had No Pants On.”

“I know!” Hayley exclaims. “You gotta text him, it’s- it’s fate! He wants to hang out! Maybe you can ask him why he was fighting a whole ass duck, or, or maybe you guys could, I don’t know, hit it off or something! I mean, he’s looking for you Patrick! A whole international search and everything, look at how many retweets and likes this has!”

She points. 30,829 retweets and 52,353 likes. Patrick feels a little nauseous.

“Wow…” Patrick says, and he swallows hard. He’s not really even sure what to do with that information, but he knows one thing.

“Well, I’m definitely not contacting him,” he says, bringing his hands up to his face before he remembers that he’s still wearing that stupid sheet-mask. So, he settles for crossing his arms. “That’s so… so weird! I don’t wanna hang out, what if he gets Donald to come after me?”

Hayley throws her hands up in the air in frustration. “But we’ll never know why he named the duck Donald!”

Patrick mimics her motion- his hands go up as well. “It’s because of Donald Duck, I’m sure! I don’t wanna- ugh, no, that’s so- this is so much pressure! He said he was desperate to see me! And that I was cute!  He’s clearly crazy.”

“I’m sure _Pete_ isn’t crazy,” Hayley crosses her arms. “I’m gonna contact him. It’s for your own good Patrick.”

And after 3 failed attempts at stealing her laptop from her (“Haha, was this like the fight between Pete and Donald?”), Patrick just angrily stomps to the bathroom to peel his sheet-mask off, so that he can sleep everything off.

As he throws away the slimy mask, he rethinks everything. The tattoos on the guy, on _Pete_ , his wide eyes, the fucking panties. God. It’s all so, it’s all so ridiculous, this whole thing is dumb, Pete searching for him, because they had a missed connection, it’s dumb. It’s so dumb.

Yet, Patrick kinda likes the idea that out of 30,829 retweets and 52,353 likes, he’s the only one. He’s the one. He’s who Pete’s looking for.

Still... Patrick just hopes that Hayley didn’t go through with actually DM’ing the guy.

* * *

 

With 24 ( _24!)_ unsolicited dick pics, 3 spam accounts trying to smuggle what little money Pete had in his bank account, and 6 people trying to argue with Pete about a tweet from 3 years ago, Pete was… maybe beginning to regret both posting the flyer in the park in the first place, _and_ posting it on the internet. He blocked out his number on Twitter, so that wasn’t an issue, but there were thousands of people asking if Pete found his _dream guy_ and his _soulmate,_ and there was no word from the _actual_ guy yet. And everyone who did try to claim that it was them didn’t match everything in Pete’s mind- blue eyes, clear glasses, a red nose from the cold, maybe, or maybe he was crying, that would explain the roses, the _roses_.

Joe, who’s been bothering Pete about this since he taped the first flyer to the bench in the park, laughs as he peers down at Pete’s phone as he opened another DM and was greeted by _dick_.

“It’s not funny,” Pete grumbles. “It’s fucking gross.”

“It’s pretty funny. We told you not to post that! And we told you not to put that flyer up in the park!” Joe notes, and he sits himself down onto the couch next to Pete, looking over his shoulder as he deletes useless DMs. “You’re not even gonna check them? But what if one of them is him?”

“I doubt ‘fuckmedaddy69’ is him, Joe.” “Oh… I mean, you never know…”

But Joe doesn’t let up after that. “But you’re not- you’re barely looking! Give it to me, I’ll go through it for you. But can you warm up some pizza for me?”

Pete would take warming pizza up over dick pics any day, so he gladly hands his phone over. “Good luck. If I come back and you have your hands in your pants because you found a good picture, I _will_ kill you.”

5 minutes later, Pete returns to the couch, with two plates in hand. “Any progress?”

He hands one of the plates of pizza over to Joe, who groans in response. “Dude, what the hell, no drinks?!”

Still, he takes the plate from Pete’s hands. “And yeah, I did make progress actually. It’s from a girl named Hayley, she thinks that her friend might be your guy. Move over, I gotta get soda. Coke or Sprite?”

“Surprise me,” Pete replies, although he’s already surprised. More than surprised. Fuckin’… fuckin’ flabbergasted! Joe found someone? He sets his pizza on the coffee table, and he looks down at his phone, at the direct messages.

_@yelyah: hey, I think my friend patrick is ur guy????_

_@yelyah: he had red roses with him and paperboy hat that we pinned to his hair so that the breeze wouldn’t take it_

_@yelyah: and the worlds ugliest tee shirt and blazer and I think he was wearing his big clear glasses._

_@yelyah: sound familiar?_

“Oh my God, that’s him!” Pete yells, grabbing his phone with both hands and shaking it with excitement because there’s too much of it running through his veins right now, and all he wants to do is start screaming and/or grab this Hayley girl and hug her extra tight. “HIS NAME IS PATRICK, _ANDY_.”

Andy, who’s been sleeping on the other side of the couch, sticks his hand out of under the covers to flip Pete off.

He clicks on her @ just to make sure it’s him, and 15 tweets about how much men suck later, he finds a selfie of Hayley and Patrick. She’s got this fire red-orange hair and under other circumstances, Pete would find her kinda cute, but his eyes are on _Patrick_. The sweet smile, the wide glasses, the baseball cap that covers his hair, it’s him. The boy with the roses.

“So it’s him? Can I see?” Joe asks, handing Pete the can of Sprite. Pete takes it with a small frown- he was sorta hoping for the Coke, but he’ll take it. He holds his phone up for Joe to see and Joe squints a little before he says, “Patrick Stump? We’re friends!”

“Friends?!” Pete squeaks out, “but- but how?”

“He was in Patterson a while back,” Joe waves him off. “Anyways, I know he’s gay, so I guess your chances have improved big time.”

“How do you know he’s gay?” Pete asks, wide eyed because oh God, don’t let Patrick and Joe- “No, ew, not like that. We just both went off about the ridiculousness of stage gay together for a while, you’re good. Anyways, pass me the remote.”

He and Hayley message back and forth for a while as Joe channel surfs for 30 minutes.

@plkw_poe: Ur my savior. Holy shit that’s him

@yelyah: yay! he said that this search is too much pressure and now hes afraid that hes gonna let you down

@yelyah: or some shit like that

@yelyah: but i said that there are too many questions left unanswered. dude WHY the lacy panties I have to know

@yelyah: so im gonna give u his number, just say hayley sent you :)

@yelyah: xxx-xxx-xxxx

@plkw_poe:  Panties feel hella good what can I say? Thnks fr th number!

@yelyah: facts only. & no prob :’)

 

“Do you think it’s too soon to text? She said that he didn’t wanna talk to me, but then she said that, like, something about- basically, she just gave me his number and said to talk to him,” Pete says, and Joe looks over at Pete with an exhausted look on his face. “I’ve been at work for 9 hours, all I want to do is fucking watch Full House and eat my shitty pizza, okay? Figure it out. I would do it, you already went through all the trouble. And saw, like, 30 dicks in the progress.”

“31…” Pete says with a wince, as he deletes another DM.

* * *

The thing is that Patrick had no intention of talking to this Pete guy in the first place. But.., now that that Pete had his number, and now that they were talking, it’s past midnight and Patrick’s sitting in the corner of his room because that’s where the outlet is, it wasn’t so bad. Pete… Pete was Pete. A fucking character, yeah, but he was kinda funny?

Patrick: You should call me

Patrick: My phone is done charging, so…

Pete: Oh wow. Yeah, let’s.

Patrick: I just have a lot of questions, it would be a lot of typing, y’know

Patrick: Cool…!

Patrick brings a hand to his forehead, and he groans outwardly. Awkwardness oozes throughout his whole being, and maybe asking Pete to fucking call him was a little out there, but you know what else was a little out there? Pete bringing his search for Patrick to Twitter. The tweet is still climbing in growth, even after Pete tweeted that he had found his dream guy. Patrick very pointedly ignored that part, though.

The call comes in, and Patrick pulls his phone off the charge as he climbs back into bed. “Hi,” he says, shyness creeping back into him. Suddenly everything feels weird again, like maybe his voice sounds weird, or maybe in a crazy turn of events, he wasn’t the guy Pete was looking for, and-

“Your _voice_ ,” Pete says, all breathless, and no, Patrick knows it’s him.

“Yeah,” Patrick laughs, all bubbly, he’s so nervous, he feels like- like he doesn’t know, like something so good is going to happen, like he’s getting to the bridge of the song. “Your voice too. It’s you.”

“And you’re you!” Pete laughs too, and Patrick laughs more, and he feels like he’s on drugs, he’s punch drunk, and Patrick says, “I’m, uh, really tired right now, I usually get really… weird and stuff.”

“I like weird,” Pete says. “Weird’s… weird’s good.”

“Yeah maybe,” Patrick grins. “So, I have a question and it’s been really eating at me.”

“Is it about the panties? Dude, I just like wearing panties sometimes,” Pete groans, and Patrick shakes his head even though he knows Pete can’t see him. “No, it’s not about the panties, I don’t care about that. That’s not even- my question is why… why do you have a feud with a duck in the first place?”

There’s a long pause on the other line, like Pete’s trying to come up with either 1) a good explanation or 2) a way to lie his way through it.

“It’s- it’s a really dumb story,” Pete begins to say. “Something that belongs in a cheesy 80s movie, or something, where a human and animal have a feud and then it ends in ultimate friendship and then the animal helps me with a huge crisis in my life, and then the animal dies in the end and everyone cries, and then we all come out the theatre knowing something we didn’t.”

“You’re stalling,” Patrick says.

“A little…” Pete winces. “Okay, it- it started 3 years ago. I was eating a loaf of bread in that same exact spot you were sitting in, and-“

“Wait, hold on,” Patrick says urgently, because- “eating the bread hot dog style, or piece by piece, or slice by slice?”

“Piece by piece, it wasn’t sliced, but I wouldn’t eat a loaf of bread like a hot dog and just bite into it!” Pete exclaims, sounding mildly offended, and Patrick throws his hands into the air. “Sorry! I just had to know so that I can picture it better in my head. So, you’re tearing through your loaf of bread like a barbarian, correct?”

A slight pause, before Pete says timidly, “correct. I was hungry, alright?  So, I’m eating the bread. Fine. But then this duck comes up to me, and I’m guessing he’s hungry.  But, but I’m eating bread! And you’re not supposed to feed bread to ducks, and throw it into the ponds and shit, it’s, like, bad for them.”

“It is?” Patrick asks, because he didn’t know that. Not that he eats whole loafs of bread in the park, but he wouldn’t know any better- he would definitely throw a piece of bread into the pond of the ducks looked hungry. He’s sure he’s done it when he was younger too?

“Yeah, it is,” Pete says. “It makes them sick and whatever. So, I don’t give him my bread, because I’m looking out for him. And then he got angry at me because I wasn’t feeding him even though I had a lot of my loaf left, and since then, he’s got it out for me! Even when I try to bring foods that ducks can eat, Donald just fucking wants me dead or something! So, ever since Donald bit me, it’s been on sight with us. But I was in the park that day because I wanted to take the shortcut home, and I thought by some miracle Donald would have forgiven me, but clearly not, and- are you laughing at me?”

No, Patrick isn’t laughing at Pete, but he’s laughing about the whole situation so hard that his insides ache. It takes a couple of minutes, full minutes, for Patrick to pull himself together to finish a whole sentence, because every time he tries, “So you’re telling me-“, he bursts into giggles again. “So, so, _so_ you’re telling me that your rivalry began because you wanted to help? Oh my _god_ , that’s so fucking funny?!”

“It’s not,” Pete whines, “it’s really not!”

“It is!” Patrick insists, before he starts laughing again. “Pete, you just wanted to do the right thing! And then he started hating you, and then he stole your pants!”

“He did,” Pete says miserably, “he stole my pants, and then that’s where you came in. Oh, and uh. Thanks for the roses by the way. You really helped me not get on some sort of, like, list or something…”

Patrick smiles bitterly into the darkness of his room. “I’m just glad someone put them to use.”

There’s a silence that shakes Patrick to his core, because now what? Do they get off the phone? Pete said that he was, he was _cute_ or something, but maybe he didn’t even really mean that, and maybe Pete just wanted to find him to thank him, and-

“Hey… are you free any time this week? I wanna… hang out…” Pete says, and Patrick’s can hear the nervousness in it. It’s endearing, and it warms Patrick up. “Like, I wanna hang out with you. Or take you out. Let me take you out?”

“Yeah,” Patrick smiles _un_ bitterly this time, this one is easy and good, it’s bright pink. “Yeah, we can arrange that.”

* * *

They’re meeting at the restaurant that Patrick got stood up at.

And Patrick, he tells himself that that won’t happen, because he’s meeting Pete. It’s _Pete_ , it’s- it’s 3am conversations and a shared interest in Miguel’s music, and it’s Pete’s voice, and he has nothing to worry about.

This is what he tries to tell himself.

But he walks the same distance as he did a week ago, minus the roses, and there’s a really ugly pit in his stomach. The detox that he and Hayley did a day ago, hands clasped together as they chanted **“LOVE IS GOOD! WE DESERVE IT! WE ARE GOOD PEOPLE!”** suddenly slips from Patrick’s mind, and suddenly, the song in his head, a cheerful ukulele tune, goes sour.

Pete and Patrick, they confirmed the date in the morning, in between texts about laundry (yeah, they talk about laundry, so what?), but maybe Pete was agreeing to Patrick’s remark about throwing the whites in with the colors because it hasn’t caused him any problems yet, and not about the. The date. It was a _date_.

With bated breath, Patrick stepped into the restaurant, and began his search for Pete. The left side of the restaurant comes up empty, and Patrick’s about to start projectile vomiting, but when he turns to his right, this is so right, he sees Pete. They lock eyes for the first time since the incident, and everything comes back to Patrick. The panties, the shattered phone protector, the duck. And then he cracks a smile, as he makes his way to Pete’s table.

“Hi,” Patrick says, and his heart is about to burst into a million trillion kabillion pieces, because Pete’s here, and it’s Pete, and he’s a lot more handsome than Patrick remembers. “What do you- _oh shit._ ”

Pete’s holding out a bouquet of red roses for Patrick.

“Since you gave me roses the first time we met,” Pete says a little too easily, like he’s got this rehearsed, but that makes Patrick smile even wider. “I figured it was my turn.”

“You’re an idiot,” Patrick laughs, the ‘ **:’)** ’ emoticon incarnate, and Pete smiles too, breaking all signs of that professionalism and charisma.

All throughout their lunch, Patrick feels like the happiest song in the world. In the end, he guesses he has his failed date to thank for this… but if he’s gotta thank that failed date, then Donald the Duck deserves some credit too.

**Author's Note:**

> !!!!!!!!!! i know its hella short but like. idk. its vacation!
> 
> also, if you read EAPotato: a bitch is really struggling out here! i've rewrote the beginning to chapter 7 like 3 times. but i still hate it. sorry its approaching a month since ive updated :( hopefully i'll have something out soon but... uh. yeah. sorry again *insert sad face emoji followed by the rock on emoji*


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